Software:

All the ATI cards used the Catalyst 10.6 drivers, while the NVIDIA cards used Forceware 257.21 drivers. The GTS 450 on the other hand will be using the new 260.52 drivers.

Benchmarks DX11:

Aliens vs Predator

Unigine Heaven 2.1

Metro 2033

Benchmarks DX10:

Futuremark: 3DMark Vantage

Street Fighter IV

Crysis Warhead

Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2

Darkest of Days

Bioshock 2

Resident Evil 5

Just Cause 2

All benchmarks were performed at resolutions of 1280x1024, 1680x1050, 1920x1200 and 2560x1600. Vsync is disabled in the control panel and AA is set to x4 with AF set to x16. The only benchmark performed with lower AA and AF is Street Fighter IV which showed better scaling when AA and AF were set to 0.

Usage:

Power consumption

Temprature

MSI's Kombuster will be used to gauge the power requirement and temperature of the graphics card. The program applies a very heavy load to the GPU and as such will push the card beyond that of a game or benchmark. For the minimum temperature and power consumption the system will be left in an idle state for 15 minutes and for load Kombuster will be left on for 15 minutes.